A more natural analogy would be between freelancing and affiliate marketing since both use distinct business strategies.
However, it does require some addressing because they overlap in many ways. For this reason, you don't need to choose; you may take both actions simultaneously.
In this article, we'll explain the following:
- Differences between freelancing and affiliate marketing
- Benefits and drawbacks of the two business models
- How to succeed as a freelancer and an affiliate marketer
Talk to each other now.
Freelancing on Legiit VS Affiliate Marketing: The Best Option??
You may work on both business models concurrently to give you a quick response.
Affiliate marketing and freelancing are complementary in many ways.
For instance, as a freelancer, you might run your blogs and provide blogging services like link building.
But blogging is better for you than freelancing or vice versa.
Let's first quickly review their functioning.
What is Freelancing?
According to Wikipedia, a freelancer is as follows:
Working for a firm or business on a contract basis is known as freelancing.
Freelancers work for themselves and operate as independent contractors while providing their services.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
A type of marketing called affiliate marketing involves promoting the goods made by other companies or brands.
And in return, you receive a specific commission.
There are currently primarily two categories of affiliate marketing models:
- Pay-per-sale: This model pays you a percentage of sales made via your affiliate link.
- Pay-per-lead: This method pays you a set amount for each lead produced by your affiliate link.
Consider Amazon Associates, one of the most well-known affiliate schemes.
Your responsibility as an Amazon affiliate is to choose a product, make the affiliate link for it, and market it to the appropriate audience.
Additionally, because it operates on the pay-per-sale affiliate model, you are compensated each time a customer uses your link to make a purchase.
Freelancing and affiliate marketing both have advantages and disadvantages today.
To help you understand, let's compare both sides by the side.
Freelancing VS Affiliate Marketing: The Differences
What Are You Selling?
The most significant difference between affiliate marketing and freelancing is the stuff you're selling.
You may make money by selling your services as a freelancer; some of the most sought-after ones are:
- Content writing
- SEO
- Graphic Designing
- Web design and development
- And much more!
As an affiliate marketer, you sell other people's items and earn commissions on the other hand.
Active VS Passive Income
The type of revenue between freelancing and affiliate marketing is another crucial distinction.
As a freelancer on Legiit, you get compensated for your time, which is why many individuals set hourly rates.
Working as a freelancer allows you to earn money while actively working.
Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is a form of passive revenue.
This is because as long as your affiliate blog articles or YouTube videos are available online, affiliate sales will continue to be generated by them.
Long-term VS Short-term
Work for yourself and make quick cash.
In other words, you get paid when your task is finished.
Freelancing often has no waiting time.
Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is more of a long-term business plan.
Ranking organic content takes time, and you typically have to put in a lot of effort for months before seeing any results.
However, the compromise is worthwhile. You receive automatic affiliate commissions.
Who Do You Deal With?
In freelancing, there is frequent back-and-forth communication with customers.
This is because, before beginning, you must completely comprehend your client's demands.
So, to succeed as a freelancer, you must have strong communication skills, which are something you can pick up along the way.
In affiliate marketing, you don't have to interact with people in person.
Helping people with their online purchases is the primary goal.
You don't have to deal with post-sale customer support, which is one of the most significant advantages of affiliate marketing.
You receive your commission after a customer purchases a product using one of your affiliate links.
Time and Income Limitations
In freelancing, there is often a limit on how long it can take you to complete a project.
Even if you select your deadlines, meeting them might require more effort.
In affiliate marketing, you only have to answer to yourself.
Nevertheless, freelancing earns you the money rapidly, rewarding your efforts.
Additionally, the higher the value of your services, the more money you may make from them.
Let's quickly discuss the parallels between affiliate marketing and freelancing now that the contrasts have been addressed.
Similarities Between Freelancing and Affiliate Marketing
Location Independence
One of the most alluring advantages of both business models is location independence.
You never have to stress about going to an office as a freelancer or an affiliate marketer.
Work from wherever suits you, at your convenience.
Skill Requirement
A freelancer must be proficient in the service they are offering.
For instance, you must first study the craft to offer graphic design services.
Similarly to this, affiliate marketing often calls for a variety of abilities.
For instance, you need to be aware of the following if you're marketing affiliate items through blog posts:
- Search engine optimization
- Blog post writing
- Link-building
Competition
Both company strategies draw many internet entrepreneurs because they both have appealing features.
The total level of competitiveness therefore rises.
However, you should know that you may lessen this rivalry by choosing a specialization and excelling.
You may accomplish this as a freelancer by focusing on a particular specialty, such as article creation, graphic design, web programming, or another.
Choosing a niche in affiliate marketing entails developing a blog on a particular sub-topic.
For instance, you might concentrate on one of its subcategories, like SEO, rather than trying to establish authority in digital marketing.
Minimal Initial Investment Needed
Freelancing and affiliate marketing can be started with little or no upfront money.
On networks like Legiit, you must set up and improve your profile if you plan to freelance.
Start engaging on Legiit official Facebook group once you have a profile that is appealing and focuses on in-demand services if you want to get recognized.
What platform you use to advertise your affiliate offers will determine your initial outlay for affiliate marketing.
For instance, investing in a domain name and site hosting is necessary for affiliate blogging.
If you wish to use YouTube as your platform, you may start writing and distributing material for free.
Let's go through the differences and similarities before going over the advantages and disadvantages.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
Businesses and affiliates may both benefit from affiliate marketing.
You may delegate to marketers the task of generating leads and revenue for your company.
Naturally, you'll need to give them something in exchange, usually a specific percentage for each transaction.
The good news is that you are not required to give them any money in advance.
The advantages listed below can encourage you to pursue affiliate marketing if you're thinking about it.
A Perfect Passive Income Source
Being a passive revenue source is one of affiliate marketing's most alluring advantages. This is due to the fact that traffic to your affiliate material, which includes blog entries, videos, and forum postings, can last for years.
You Don't Need Your Product
As an affiliate, you are not required to create and maintain your product.
Instead, you decide which ones in your area are performing the best and begin marketing them.
No After-Sale Service
When you don't own a product, dealing with clients is not necessary.
Selling proven items are all you have to do to become an affiliate.
The company that owns the product takes care of the remaining issues.
Drawbacks of Affiliate Marketing
The advantages of affiliate marketing vastly outweigh the disadvantages.
The fact that you do not control the affiliate network you use is the sole negative.
You must thus manage how you advertise their affiliate connections.
For instance, Amazon prohibits affiliates from actively promoting affiliate links in their emails.
Benefits of Freelancing
Time Independence
Anytime you want, you may work on your freelance assignments.
Of course, there are deadlines to meet, so time management skills are a must.
Consistent Skill Development
From pitching clients to managing your deadlines, you need to handle everything yourself as a freelancer.
This polishes your leadership, time-management, and technical skills.
And, as you get better, you can start charging more.
Get Paid Quickly
Typically, there's zero to minimum waiting time when receiving your payments in freelancing.
Drawbacks of Freelancing
Freelancing gives you time and location independence, with many other benefits, but it's only for some.
For one, getting your foot in the freelancing door can be overwhelming if:
- You aren't skillful enough
- Your skills aren't in-demand
- You don't know the process
- You're not willing to do the required work
Fortunately, getting started as a freelancer on Legiit tends to be a lot easier than on other platforms because:
- You can promote yourself as a service provider in a lot of effective ways
- It's one of the fastest-growing freelance platforms in the world
How to Start Affiliate Marketing?
Pick a Platform
Now, there are several platforms you can do affiliate marketing on.
Instagram can also work if you build a loyal following around your niche.
A lot of influencers are also affiliating marketers.
But blogging and YouTube are the two most effective and easiest ways to build an audience.
The cool thing is starting a blog doesn't have to cost you more than a few dollars per month.
All you need to invest in is a good domain name and hosting service.
Content publishing and SEO would be your long-term investments in affiliate blogging.
The second platform is YouTube.
Anyone can start uploading videos on YouTube for free, making it an ideal option for beginners.
Just make sure to optimize your videos for SEO and create valuable, helpful content.
The cool thing is: You can include your affiliate links under your YouTube videos.
You must include an affiliate disclosure on your affiliate marketing platform.
You can create a separate affiliate disclosure page on an affiliate blog or add the disclosure in the footer.
Moreover, getting clicks on affiliate links tends to be easier on a blog than on a YouTube video.
Choose a Niche
Let's face it. Starting a blog today means facing a lot of competition.
According to research, 2.3 million blog posts are published daily on WordPress sites. So what is the best way to sidestep that competition? Niche-down!
This means creating a blog on a specific category of a larger market.
For instance, "Food" is too broad, but "Grilled food" is not.
A niche is just a smaller market within a market.
Focusing on a particular niche can help you:
- Build a more focused audience and establish authority quicker
- Rank on Google in a relatively less time
Once you've covered most of the topics in that niche, you can expand into other categories.
Note: You should publish content on your affiliate blog regularly, which can be tricky in a niche that interests you less.
So, don't just work on a niche because it's profitable.
If you're outsourcing your blog posts, work with seasoned experts.
It'll help you build authority and eventually generate more affiliate sales.
Join Affiliate Programs
Now, you can try joining any affiliate program you find online.
But, the reality is that not all are suitable for beginners.
For instance, high-ticket affiliate programs with a small market can be super competitive.
This is because your odds of getting accepted as a beginner are low.
So, you want to go for the low-ticket, high-volume affiliate networks, for instance, Amazon Associates.
There are tons of daily-use, inexpensive products on Amazon that sell like crazy.
So it'd be easy for you to sell them to your audience.
But, of course, you'll need a good amount of traffic to generate enough income with low-ticket programs.
So, how do you find the right affiliate programs for you?
This depends on your expertise level and niche.
You can do a quick Google search to find the right affiliate programs.
Here's an example:
Create Great Content
To succeed in affiliate blogging, you must create high-quality, helpful content.
Most of your content should be aimed at solving visitors' problems.
Also, you want to review only some products in the market.
So make sure whatever you recommend to your audience does what it's supposed to do.
Plus, your content should appeal to both search engines and readers.
Optimizing your blog posts for search engines means:
- Using your target keywords in the right places (URL, headings, paragraphs, image alt texts) at the right frequency
- Writing user-friendly content
- Including visuals
Drive Traffic
Now, driving traffic to your affiliate blog posts shouldn't be a problem if you work on the right keywords and produce SEO-friendly content,
But you can do more than just organic traffic.
- You can also use advertising to get quick traffic to your posts, but it'd cost you upfront
- The second method is to build an email list
On Legiit, How Do I Work as a Freelancer?
The cool thing about freelancing is that you can do it in your spare time.
So you can invest a little bit of your time doing it.
But, of course, the more you invest in time and energy, the more you can earn from your craft.
Package Your Skills
You want to find a suitable freelancing occupation for yourself.
It could be something related to your existing expertise or a new skill.
Here are a few popular skills clients all over the world are looking for:
- Writing
- Web development
- Graphic Designing
- App development
- Digital Marketing
Package Your Skills
Once you've decided what skill to offer, it's time to package that skill into a service.
Your goal is to understand what clients are looking for and offer your service as a cost-effective solution.
Create a Portfolio
The next thing you should be doing to get your foot in the door is creating a portfolio.
At this stage, you want to be bold in doing work at low prices.
Create Freelancing Profile on Legiit
Once you have a marketable skill and some portfolio to show, create your freelancer profile on Legiit with relevant service pages.
Let's quickly guide you on how to create a service page on Legiit.
First, sign up on Legiit, go to the "Services" page, and select "Add new service."
Next, add your:
- Service title
- Service subtitle
- Category
- Subcategory
- Pricing
- Delivery days
- Number of revisions
The next page is where you should spend the most time optimizing your service.
Unlike other freelancing sites, Legiit lets you write a detailed page description.
You can add anything you think can help sell your service without worrying about the character limit.
You can add images, videos, and client testimonials to improve your conversion rate.
Then, add the information you need from the buyer.
For instance, you can ask for the topic/keywords for a content writing service.
You can even add questions. For example, you'd be asked to upload your service media on the next page.
It's mandatory to add at least one image, which would act as your service's thumbnail.
Make sure your image is eye-catching and effectively represents your service.
Lastly, just hit "Publish," and your service will go live after being reviewed by the Legiit support team.
Your service will be live in no time, and it's time to promote it.
So, join Legiit's Facebook group, interact, and get noticed by potential clients.
Getting your first freelancing project is properly presenting your service to the right people.
Once you get your first order, it's all about effective communication and providing top-notch service.
Build a Relationship With Your Client
Usually, if you provide excellent services, your first-time buyer will become your repeat buyer. But first, you must build a strong relationship with them by helping their business move forward.
Plus, effective communication is critical when it comes to nurturing business relationships. And by delivering on time every single time, you make yourself a reliable resource for your client.
Keep Developing Your Skills
As a freelancer, you're hired to offer the latest and most in-demand skills.
Freelancing is a continuously changing industry.
It will help if you keep upgrading your skillset according to the latest trends.
Freelancing VS Affiliate Marketing: Can You Choose Both?
Absolutely. By now, you know how both of these business models work.
So, if you think you can manage both simultaneously, there's nothing that should prevent that.
The good thing is freelancing and affiliate marketing complement each other in some areas.
Most of the skills you'll learn while affiliate marketing is sellable as freelance services.
These skills include:
- Keyword research
- SEO
- Content writing
- Link-building
- And, more
So, you can offer these services as a freelancer and manage your affiliate business.
Just make sure you have the time and capacity to manage both effectively.
Freelancing VS Affiliate Marketing: Conclusion
This was all about affiliate marketing vs. freelancing.
We hope you enjoyed this guide and now have the clarity to move forward confidently.
Affiliate marketing is an excellent source of passive income, whereas freelancing brings in quick bucks.
It doesn't have to be an either-or option; you can have the best of both worlds.
To scale, you'd need to build and manage a team. And Legiit is the best place to do just that.
Do you have questions about how to find your ideal niche? Let us know in the comments below!
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